The 2021 University & College Designers Association (UCDA) Design Competition honored mStoner clients with four Awards of Excellence in the Website category for their recent and successful redesigns.
The eighteen judges evaluated 632 print and digital entries, awarding 210 awards—8 Gold Awards, 24 Silver Awards, and 178 Awards of Excellence.
Awards of Excellence — Website Category
Agnes Scott College
Core Challenge:
Governance of the site had become a case of too many cooks in the kitchen. Various faculty contributors and content managers had created a lack of consistency in the site’s voice and style and the type of information it provided. The team at Agnes Scott knew their website redesign needed a plan for centralized governance and training for designated content managers.
The Results:
Along with a new governance plan, the new site is mobile-friendly, accessibility compliant, fast-loading and optimized for search engines. Navigation has been streamlined and separated by topic, task, and audience; and internal and external information have been separated for a more intuitive user experience.
Visit the website and read the case study.
Elmhurst University
Core Challenge:
The website refresh had three overarching goals. The first: to show off. Elmhurst has experienced record enrollment and fundraising in recent years, as well as increased national recognition. The second goal was to tell a more cohesive story on the homepage to prospective students while continuing to effectively serve multiple audiences. Finally, Elmhurst wanted to elevate its academic programs with a prominent position on the redesigned homepage.
The Results:
Initial results indicate visitors find the content engaging and the site well-organized. New components garner more clicks than the previous version: a 7.5% increase on desktop and a 5% increase on mobile. Heat maps show visitors scroll further down the page than on the previous site. The new header and navigation menu are getting people where they want to go. Click rates have increased on the Apply, Visit, and Request Info links, and traffic has increased significantly to the major navigation sections.
Visit the website and read the case study.
Interlochen Center for the Arts
Core Challenge:
Interlochen Center for the Arts is an immersive arts school primarily for students in grades 3–12. Interlochen wanted a redesigned website to better reflect their brand, mission, and values. Improved UX, greater conversions, and increased organic traffic were the main goals of the new site.
The Result:
mStoner worked closely with the web team at Interlochen through tried and true methods of experience mapping, content development, and governance planning to create a rich site experience that spoke directly to its target audiences. User testing was overwhelmingly positive and the Interlochen team is pleased with the clean design and easy-to-navigate user interface.
University of North Carolina School of the Arts
Core Challenge:
Three years after a successful website redesign with mStoner, UNCSA was eager to partner with mStoner again to refresh its homepage. This time, the joint team conducted a design sprint — an inclusive process for rapid design and validation that generates effective solutions to big business challenges. With three years of site analytics to draw from, UNCSA Vice Chancellor for Strategic Communications Claire Machamer and her team knew what content and ideas worked. They wanted more insight into the why’s, though, and wanted to test some new ideas.
The Results:
The design sprint process provided an efficient, highly creative way to accomplish this. The UNCSA refresh included a content development workshop, the homepage update, navigation refinements, a program finder module, and a new interface for ticket sales. The latter solved a large pain point for UNCSA: making performance listings easier to find and browse.
Visit the website and read the case study.
Want to see more award-winning work from mStoner? Check out our full list of case studies.
-
Travis Koury Marketing Manager As marketing manager, Travis Koury shares mStoner’s thought leadership and service offerings across a multitude of channels. He thoughtfully applies digital marketing best practices to ensure higher education marketing and communication professionals can easily discover and access mStoner’s helpful resources, primary research, and on-demand content.